LEADERSHIP
Top five leadership skills part one By Dr. Wilbert R. Mutoko (PhD, FHEA)
Dr. Wilbert R. Mutoko (PhD, FHEA) is a business doctor, researcher and senior lecturer for Leadership, Strategy, Change Management and Entrepreneurship at Botswana Accountancy College in collaboration with Sheffield Hallam University (UK), University of Derby (UK), and University of Sunderland (UK). He is a dynamic and entertaining International Inspirational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Executive Coach, Certified eSpeaker & Online Facilitator, and Author for almost two decades. Dr. Mutoko has empowered over hundreds of CEOs, directors, and managers to discover their strengths, sharpen their presentation skills, build self-confidence and emotional intelligence, and harness capabilities to build winning teams; to become peak performance leaders with increased profitability. His three books on financial freedom and relationships are available at Exclusive Books (Riverwalk) and Bala Books (Rail Park Mall). Dr. Mutoko writes in his personal capacity. For feedback, you can contact him on email: wilbert@wilbertmutoko. com or wilbertmutoko@ gmail.com. Visit Dr. Mutoko’s website: https://wilbertmutoko. com/
Leadership can only be effective if you acquire skills and sharpen them over the years. Some of the top leadership skills include integrity, ability to mentor your juniors, and decisiveness. Integrity There is no leader who will leave a legacy without integrity. Integrity refers to honesty and upholding high moral standards. If you were to rate yourself now, how honest are you on a scale of 0 to 10 (10 being the highest level of honesty)? Do you regard high moral standards? Do you speak the truth? Do you stand for what is right? Do you avoid sexual relationships in the workplace? It is sad that some people are in leadership positions, but they are corrupt, habitual liars, and they always misrepresent facts. In some cases, one of the written down organizational values includes honesty. But the honesty is nowhere to be found in action and reality. The worst part is that as a leader, if you are not honest, you instill a culture of dishonest among your followers. Everyone becomes just like you, hence the organization has no future. The starting point is to analyze your level of honesty/dishonesty, then decide what steps you will take to come out of dishonesty. One way to come out of dishonesty is to read ethics books or watch ethics videos and start on your journey to become an ethical leader who leads by example. Ability to mentor juniors Any leader who has a big picture thinking should mentor juniors and encourage the team members to hold mentorship in high esteem. Mentoring refers to a training method in the workplace where an experienced and skilled
employee guide and supports a junior employee to upskill and improve his/her competence at work. The mentor helps with goal setting, motivation, emotional support, and role modeling. Successful organizations ensure that every new employee is assigned to a mentor. Without mentorship, new and young employees take long to get used to the organization and to excel at work. How good are you at mentoring your juniors? Do you have systems in place for your firm to uphold mentorship? What has been your experience with being mentored? What has been your experience with mentoring others? Decisiveness A successful leader is good at making timely decisions. If files take too long on your desk before approval, the firm will lose golden opportunities, employees will get disappointed and discouraged, suppliers will be paid late, and there will generally be discontent. For example, some employees at Google have been said to be discontented with the lack of decisiveness by the current CEO, Sundar Pichai, who is at the helm of the company since 2015. The employees were used
Strides Magazine
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August 2021
to the fast-decision-making capabilities of former CEOs Larry Page and Eric Schmidt. However, while Google is faced with the alleged slow decision-making at the top, it should be noted that the current CEO has his own strengths in innovativeness which is seeing Google continuing to break forth on every side. Nevertheless, it will be helpful if Sundar can sharpen his decisiveness to take advantage of opportunities and bring more confidence to his teams. How decisive are you as a leader? Do your staff have confidence in the time you take to approve important matters? What can you do today to start being more decisive? Conclusion As a leader, you need to be consistently looking for ways to increase and polish skills and competencies. Lack of skills and competencies negatively affect leadership growth and eventually the culture of the whole organization. In part two of this series, I shall be writing on the following skills problem-solving and team building. However, I might give you a bonus leadership skill as well. I wish you the best of every success as a leader. Together we will sail through this crisis.
